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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on October 3rd, 2008
For Immediate Release: “Equality” at the United Nations October 8-9, 2008: The only two substantive planning sessions for the UN’s so-called “anti-racism” conference - known as Durban II - were deliberately planned over major Jewish holidays, including the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur. The real double-standards:
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The Kyoto Mechanisms: Key to combating climate change? IISD Climate Change and Energy Director John Drexhage is the moderator of the event, designed to focus attention on a critical core element of the global climate change negotiations in the lead up to Copenhagen in December 2009. Other discussants are Geneva-based International Emissions Trading Association President and CEO Henry Derwent and Columbia University Ewing-Worzel Professor of Geophysics Klaus S. Lackner. Date: Thursday, October 9, 2008 Seating is limited. Register online at www.earth.columbia.edu/calendar This event will be webcast at http://www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/1775. Links to the webcast will also be available at www.iisd.org and www.unfccc.int ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on October 2nd, 2008
From: info at partnersforinnovation.com
October 2008
More information: Peter Vissers
More information: Emiel Hanekamp
More information: Peter Karsch
More information: Siem Haffmans
More information: Carolien van Merksteijn
However, there is also good news about climate change. To start with, the debate on climate change has completely shifted over the past five years, from whether we need to respond, to how we should respond. Secondly, the costs for a dramatic increase of carbon productivity, which is the obvious way forward, are likely to be manageable: in the order of 0.6 to 1.4 percent of global GDP by 2030 according to a recent McKinsey report. More good news: the renewable energy sector continues to show phenomenal growth rates, higher than any other energy sector, as shown by REN21’s status reports, our work in the RECIPES project and recent market research that we performed in Germany. And last but not least: energy efficiency has made a remarkable jump upwards on all of our personal priority lists, due to high energy prices. More and more public and private organisations have decided to become climate neutral, through a mix of measures related to energy efficiency, use of renewable energy and investment in compensation projects. They do so because they consider that this is important for society and for their organisation’s own continuity. For Partners for Innovation, climate change has been a focal point since the start. We have been climate neutral since 2006 and assist our clients in becoming climate neutral. In comparison to some years ago, the options to lower the carbon footprint are rapidly increasing. We believe that change towards low carbon technologies will advance much quicker than is foreseen by most people today. Who anticipated the success of the worldwide web or mobile phones before they really took off? ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on September 30th, 2008 From: unobserver at iom.int ETHIOPIA – Skilled Expat Medics Arrive to Provide Medical Care, Training - A group 105 doctors and nurses, many of them members of the Ethiopian diaspora in North America, are this week travelling to Ethiopia to provide vital medical care in four hospitals in the capital, Addis Ababa. They will also share their knowledge with local health care professionals. A second group of 67 medics, members of the Ethiopian North American Health Professionals Association (ENAHPA), will be travelling to Ethiopia later this week. “These doctors, nurses and other medical professionals are participating in IOM’s Migration for Development in Ethiopia or MIDEth programme, a capacity building initiative aimed at strengthening the government’s institutional capacities to address some of this country’s acute human resources constraints,” explains Charles Kwenin, IOM’s Chief of Mission in Addis Ababa. The medics will deliver specialized health services, including cardiac surgery, pacemaker implants, oral and maxillofacial and reconstructive surgery, neurosurgery, ENT surgery and tele-opthamology. The mission will not only reach hundreds of Ethiopians with state-of-the-art medical services, but will also assist the country’s health sector professionals with hands-on training that will improve the standard of health care in major Ethiopian hospitals. IOM’s MidEth programme also extends beyond the health sector. Later this month two professors will travel to Ethiopia to teach at Addis Ababa University. One, a business professor, will remain in the country for three months. The other, an information technology specialist, will lead a one-month seminar for PhD students.
Ethiopian Airlines is also supporting the initiative, providing discounted airfares and bigger baggage allowances to transport some of the medical equipment. ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on September 25th, 2008 Jens Stoltenberg, Gordon Brown, Bill Gates, Robert Zoellick, Margaret Chan and other speakers will launch an initiative to save 10 Million mothers and newborns by 2015 - at a press conference at 10.30am on 25 September at the UN Headquarters. This from the Norwegian Mission: Siri Gjortz (+1 646 642 9910) UK Mission: Heather Pillans (+44 7795 656487) or Justin McKenzie Smith (917 282 0128) World Bank: Phil Hay (+1 202 409 2909) WORLD LEADERS LAUNCH A PLAN FOR SAVING 10 MILLION MOTHERS AND NEWBORNS BY 2015. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg of Norway launched the first year Progress Report on the Global Campaign for Health. The Report demonstrates that increased investments in health - a doubling of health aid since 2000 - are having results. More than 2 million people are now receiving AIDS treatment, the rapid scale-up of effective malaria programmes is leading to dramatic reductions in child mortality and measles deaths have fallen by 68% since 1999. But the Report also calls for urgent, effective international action to accelerate progress towards the UN goals of reducing maternal and child deaths by 2015. To save 3m mothers and 7m newborns - and meet these goals - an extra $2.4bn in 2009 rising to $7bn in 2015 will be needed. Responding to this call, Heads of Governments and Health Agencies committed to mobilise international support for stronger health systems, including the training and recruitment of over 1 million health workers. Specific pledges included an announcement by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown of nearly $1bn over the next 3 years to support national health plans in 8 countries, and a commitment from Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank, to base teams of new, expert staff in Africa over the coming months to help some of the poorest countries to strengthen their health systems for better maternal, newborn and child health. And, while these traditional investments in the health of the poor remain vital to tackling disease, helping developing countries to recruit and retain health workers, and build and develop their own health systems will require a new long-term approach to health financing. So today world leaders announced the establishment of a high-level Taskforce on Innovative Financing for Health Systems, to make recommendations to the Italian G8 Summit in 2009 on how innovative aid mechanisms can complement other sources of finance to deliver the extra resources that are needed. An unprecedented coalition of partners has gathered in New York to support the Global Campaign’s call for urgent action. Summarising the range of events taking place, Margaret Chan pledged to keep the cause of mothers and children firmly at the top of the international development agenda and with development and civil society partners, rapidly scale up support for countries through the International Health Partnership to develop and finance comprehensive national health plans. 1) Those at the press conference will incluse Prime Minister Stoltenberg (Norway), Prime Minister Brown (UK), Margaret Chan (Director-General, World Health Organisation), Robert Zoellick (President, World Bank), Bill Gates, Phillipe Douste-Blazy (UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Innovative Financing) and Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul (Germany, UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy on the review conference on Financing for Development). 2) On 26 September 2007, in New York a group of world leaders will meet to launch the Global Campaign for the Health Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The Global Campaign aims to give renewed impetus to MDGs 4, 5 and 6. These MDGs focus on the urgent need to improve maternal, newborn and child health and to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. 3) The first year report of the Global Campaign includes individual and collective contributions from 14 heads of State/Government and 18 international leaders. The report provides an update of major activities during the last year, and highlights concrete actions that are required to accelerate the necessary progress if we are to reach the health related MDGs by 2015. 4) The report demonstrates that investments in health are yielding results in terms of lives saved: · More than 2 million people are now receiving AIDS treatment. And, for the first time since the AIDS epidemic began, the number of people newly infected in a year has declined. · Malaria nets are being distributed much more rapidly leading to dramatic reductions in child mortality. 5) But much more must be done. The Global Campaign is calling for an extra $2.4bn in 2009 rising to $7bn in 2015 to save 3m mothers and 7m newborns by 2015. This money will support stronger health systems, including over 1 million extra health workers, and the additional costs needed to ensure 400m extra births take place in a quality assured clinics. If delivered it will represent a 70% reduction in the death rate for mothers and babies and would ensure the achievement of both MDG4 and 5 for the majority of the poorest countries. 6) These health systems are critical to ensuring that pregnant mothers and their newborn infants get the care they need, especially during complications in pregnancy. As part of the Global Campaign, the International Health Partnership (IHP) was launched to help improve the way donors support national health plans for health systems. 14 developing countries are members of the IHP and related initiatives (IHP+): Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique, Zambia. These countries are preparing national plans (IHP Compacts) to build stronger health systems, including providing more health workers. 7) The Taskforce for Innovative International Finance for Health Systems will help to mobilise the extra money that is needed to finance plans such as these. For example, Germany has supported a mechanism which offers debt cancellation linked to investments in the health sector. Other existing instruments include the French-led UNITAID, the results based financing trust fund and the international finance facility for immunisation. 8) The Taskforce will be co-Chaired by Gordon Brown and Robert Zoellick and comprises 8 additional members: · President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (Liberia) Phillipe Douste-Blazy, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Innovative Financing will serve as a Special Adviser to the Taskforce. 9) The Taskforce will convene up to 4 times over the next 12 months, with its first meeting at the Financing for Development Conference in Doha in November, and will report to the Italian G8 Summit in 2009. It will be supported by a Secretariat hosted by the World Bank and the WHO. ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on September 25th, 2008 Bright side of the U.S. financial meltdown. By TOM PLATE, Thursday, Sept. 25, 2008, http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/eo20… *** No. 1 is that the United States will probably now have to lecture the world a lot less on economic issues. How wonderful! That, at least, should reduce global rhetorical warming. Asia, in particular, deserves get a break from Uncle Know-It-All. The American financial establishment, it seems, is now raising the same systemic questions about the financial practice of “shorting” companies and stocks as were raised by angry Asians during the Asian Financial Crisis. Then, even otherwise well-regulated economies and companies were attacked by Western hedge funds betting ravenously that currencies and stock prices in the region would fall. The Asian argument was that such shorting (betting on downturns) can create self-fulfilling prophecies of lower stock and currency values. Back then, a smug America would not listen. But now that the tables have turned, the long and short of it is that the U.S. establishment is having Asian-like doubts. Asians may be permitted to derive a measure of sad pleasure from the sight of a huge U.S. investment bank reeling from a dose of its own medicine. *** A second quantum of solace will come when almost everyone realizes that the U.S. can no longer continue to shell out $2 billion a month for the Iraq War. “There is no such thing as a free war,” said the widely respected Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz in a speech the other night in Los Angeles. “And this has been a particularly expensive war.”
*** The third arguable plus of this crisis is the renewed sense of the remaining relevance of U.S. economic vitality. Note that AIG, the insurance giant based in the U.S., is being saved by the Bush administration on the principle that AIG is too big to fail. That is to say: the crush of a potential avalanche of historic proportions, unlike the periodic light snowfall, is not worth risking if it can be prevented.
This makes logical sense: But here’s another entity that’s also too big to fail: the United States. Petty geopolitics aside, Asia has much more to lose than gain if the U.S. tanks. Asian governments and private investment institutions have socked a chunk of their collective life savings in various high-quality U.S. government investments. The totality of their commitment is awesome. If they panic and pull out now, while the market is down, they pull the rug out from under their sovereign strategic plans.
Consider this summary observation from famed Princeton physicist and essayist Freeman Dyson: “The first decade of the twenty-first century has changed the world in a hopeful direction. In that decade, China and India decided that money is more important than ideology. It means that China and India, like Britain three hundred years earlier, will become rich countries. Asia, which is the center of gravity of the world population, will henceforth be rich rather than poor.” That would happen eventually even if the U.S. were to disappear from the face of the earth. But it will take Asia much longer and the road will be much steeper without a vibrant U.S. Perhaps Asia can take comfort in the axiom that at some point what falls down almost always gets back up on its feet again. This will be good for everybody. ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on September 24th, 2008 From: sophie.stn at googlemail.com TODAY - INTERVIEW OPPORTUNITY. MEET THE ONLY 6 CIVIL SOCEITY REPRESENTATIVES TO BE GRANTED ACCESS TO WHO? (2) Mr. Ashok Bharti (3) Dorothy Ngoma (4) Mr. Charles F. MacCormack, (5) Ms. Barbara Stocking, (6) Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez ——————— Ciara O’Sullivan ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on September 22nd, 2008 Israel may help the Arab world reach its potential. In the wake of the Kadima party’s primary elections, the process of replacing Israel’s prime minister will begin in earnest. The leading candidates, as one would expect, have been discussing the familiar litany of problems facing the country: the threat from Iran, the challenge from Hamas, the dangers posed by Hezbollah, and the conflict with Palestinians and Arab countries. Considering the long list of grave dangers, it might seem surprising that Israel’s economy is not flashing distress signals. In fact, while the global economy has split into two camps - one swimming in oil wealth, the other limping partly because of the high price of oil - Israel, a country with almost no natural resources, has just reported its best unemployment rate in more than two decades. To be sure, Israel’s economy will slow down because it is deeply intertwined with the rest of the world. But it has kept growing strongly despite an international credit spasm and a spike in commodity prices. One can only imagine the explosion of prosperity that would follow if real peace were achieved in the Middle East. Glimpses of potential: We can already see glimpses of the potential. In Dubai, the dazzling emirate that dares to be different, an Israeli-born Italian architect, David Fisher, will build another astonishing addition to the Gulf skyline. The 80-floor tower will feature floors that rotate independently, changing the shape of the building and the views from each window. The undulating structure will produce its own energy, with solar-power cells on the roof of each floor. The idea is revolutionary for many reasons, beginning with the birthplace of the architect. Arab countries don’t do business with Israelis. But Israelis have much to contribute, and progressive Arabs working with them could create world-transforming partnerships. Israel today attracts more foreign investment than anyone, except the United States and the European Union, because its entrepreneurs and scientists have proven that they can produce and innovate. Israeli products and inventions touch all of our lives. Israel has what the Arab world needs. And Israelis would rejoice in true partnerships with their Arab neighbors. Until now, the Arab Middle East has looked like a grotesque display of haves and have-nots. Oil-rich countries have splurged on luxuries while importing servants and cheap labor from poor neighbors. Israel, meanwhile - and, for a time, Lebanon - built an economy that relies on the skills and talents of its people. Israeli prosperity created thousands of jobs for Palestinians, until suicide bombings led to check points and dreadful difficulties for West Bank and Gaza residents. A vibrant economy: Despite wars, violence, and political scandals, Israel has kept investing in its people and creating a vibrant economy that could one-day help remake the entire region. Last year, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development invited Israel to apply for membership. The exclusive OECD brings together 30 of the world’s richest economies that are committed to democracy and free markets. Undeterred by political scandals and by defense spending - far exceeding US aid to Israel - that sucks out a huge portion of the national income, Israel has an exceptional educational system that stimulates creativity and independent thinking. The country has some of the world’s highest rates of university graduates, of doctorates, book production, technology companies, patents, innovation, discoveries, and much more. The Arab world has always had enormous potential and, for a time, it produced great knowledge. Then came cultural stagnation. But that will change one day. Much of the region has been derailed by war, extremism, and despotism. Precious time and treasure have been wasted. Israel, meanwhile, has focused on survival - and has thrived.
For now, however, one hears the politicians and returns back to today’s reality. For now, it’s about facing dangers and focusing on survival. |











































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